Pupillary and Attentional Responses to Infant Facial Expressions in Mothers Across Socioeconomic Variations     

Santeri Yrttiaho  Belinda Bruwer  Heather J. Zar  Kirsten A Donald  Susan Malcolm-Smith  Lee Ginton  Nadia Hoffman  Eileen Vuong  Dana Niehaus  Jukka M. Leppänen  Dan J. Stein 《Child development》2021,92(3):e236-e251

Maternal responses to infant facial expressions were examined in two socioeconomically diverse samples of South African mothers (Study I, N = 111; and Study II, N = 214; age: 17–44 years) using pupil and gaze tracking. Study I showed increased pupil response to infant distress expressions in groups recruited from private as compared to public maternity clinics, possibly reflecting underlying differences in socioeconomic status (SES) across the groups. Study II, sampling uniformly low-SES neighborhoods, found increased pupil dilation and faster orientation to expressions of infant distress, but only in the highest income group. These results are consistent with maternal physiological and attentional sensitivity to infant distress cues but challenge the universality of this sensitivity across socioeconomic diversity.  相似文献